What is ask-questions-if-underspecified?

A requirement-checking procedure for software tasks whose goals, scope, environment, or safety conditions are unclear. It asks the minimum questions needed before implementation.

Use it when requirements, success criteria, affected files, constraints, runtime, or rollback expectations are uncertain. It pauses implementation until the essential answers are known.

It avoids doing the wrong work when several interpretations are possible or important details are missing.

ask-questions-if-underspecified — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by CraftOS-dev: A requirement-checking procedure for software tasks whose

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods

npx agentmods add skills/craftos-dev/craftbot/ask-questions-if-underspecified

Any agent

npx skills add CraftOS-dev/CraftBot --skill ask-questions-if-underspecified

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/CraftOS-dev/CraftBot

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/craftos-dev/craftbot/ask-questions-if-underspecified.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/craftos-dev/craftbot/ask-questions-if-underspecified)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/craftos-dev/craftbot/ask-questions-if-underspecified"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/craftos-dev/craftbot/ask-questions-if-underspecified.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Per session 20 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 878 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.

Origin 83% copy Near-identical to another mod in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5	$0.00020	$0.00878
Opus 5	$0.00010	$0.00439
Sonnet 5	$0.00004	$0.00176
Haiku 4.5	$0.00002	$0.00088

Measured 5d ago against content hash fef9189249c4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ask-questions-if-underspecified scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 5d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

This is a copy

83% identical to ask-questions-if-underspecified — 15 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

skills/ask-questions-if-underspecified/SKILL.md · 86 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 86 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Ask Questions If Underspecified

When to Use

Use this skill when a request has multiple plausible interpretations or key details (objective, scope, constraints, environment, or safety) are unclear.

When NOT to Use

Do not use this skill when the request is already clear, or when a quick, low-risk discovery read can answer the missing details.

Goal

Ask the minimum set of clarifying questions needed to avoid wrong work; do not start implementing until the must-have questions are answered (or the user explicitly approves proceeding with stated assumptions).

Workflow

1) Decide whether the request is underspecified

Treat a request as underspecified if after exploring how to perform the work, some or all of the following are not clear:

Define the objective (what should change vs stay the same)
Define "done" (acceptance criteria, examples, edge cases)
Define scope (which files/components/users are in/out)
Define constraints (compatibility, performance, style, deps, time)
Identify environment (language/runtime versions, OS, build/test runner)
Clarify safety/reversibility (data migration, rollout/rollback, risk)

If multiple plausible interpretations exist, assume it is underspecified.

2) Ask must-have questions first (keep it small)

Ask 1-5 questions in the first pass. Prefer questions that eliminate whole branches of work.

Make questions easy to answer:

Optimize for scannability (short, numbered questions; avoid paragraphs)
Offer multiple-choice options when possible
Suggest reasonable defaults when appropriate (mark them clearly as the default/recommended choice; bold the recommended choice in the list, or if you present options in a code block, put a bold "Recommended" line immediately above the block and also tag defaults inside the block)
Include a fast-path response (e.g., reply defaults to accept all recommended/default choices)
Include a low-friction "not sure" option when helpful (e.g., "Not sure - use default")
Separate "Need to know" from "Nice to know" if that reduces friction
Structure options so the user can respond with compact decisions (e.g., 1b 2a 3c); restate the chosen options in plain language to confirm

Read the full file on GitHub · 86 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

5d ago First seen · 86 lines · 20 tokens per session scan A fef9189249c4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ask-questions-if-underspecified is a skill published in the GitHub repository CraftOS-dev/CraftBot (378 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 20 tokens to every session and 878 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 83% identical to ask-questions-if-underspecified, differing in 15 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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